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Pixel Scroll 8/12/18 Let My Pixels Go

Nine Worlds is beginning a process of reconstitution. This means that the current ownership will be dissolved, and the assets, liabilities and necessary data transferred to a new entity. The purpose of this is to a) ensure that its continued existence is sustainable and rewarding for those involved in it, and b) allow me (Dan) and the other shareholders to step away from the company and our responsibilities to it….

Why is this happening, and why now?

The current organising model is not sustainable for those on the organising side of it. A lot of people gain a lot from the event, but certain roles reliably cause harm to the people performing them or exploit them, and there’s a treadmill effect that leads to organisers carrying on until they burn out and / or do something that can’t be reconciled with continued involvement. I include myself in that: I’ve been working without choice and without pay for over two years now.

Additionally, the mix of cultures and people involved has embedded tensions that may benefit from a more concretely agreed purpose and identity. This has been causing issues from the event’s beginning, and while the intent to create a big platform that still kept high expectations of behaviour and support was positive, I’m not sure that the event will be able to meet a standard that’s acceptable to all those who attend and take part in organising, without being clearer who it’s for, what it stands for, and what people should expect, and letting people choose whether to engage in that knowledge.

And finally, I’ve invested a huge amount of time, money and my heart in Nine Worlds, but I’ve done so as a job, often working all the time for months at a time. My ’employer’ hasn’t paid me in years and imposes working conditions that would be illegal in any volunteering or employment context, and I’ve been wanting to move on for some time.

The reason I’m doing it right now is that I couldn’t do it two years ago, as an attempt to change the organisation in a different way three years ago failed hard, and necessitated an intervening two years of steady steering.

2016 put Nine Worlds Ltd far enough in debt that I couldn’t guarantee the end result of any process to reconstitute. We were reliant on future sales to cover the running cost of the current convention, and failure to transition (or attempting to close down) would result in the business failing and being unable to repay the future event sales to ticket holders.

I now have enough money to cover the shortfall without opening future ticket sales, and the event’s financial position has also improved, so I can start this process without trying to sell tickets for an undetermined event with unknown leadership to cover the gap.

(2) SPIDER TRACKS. Worldcon 76 is running a travel blog about one of the guests of honor — “The Worldcon 76 – Bound Peregrinations of Spider Robinson.” But the first entry sounds pretty disturbing.

The Worldcon 76 Guest of Honour was white as a sheet and barely able to stand. It was my job to get him from Canada to San Jose in one piece and it was looking like the trip was going to be over before it began.

After six hours in the emergency room, we got the all clear and Spider finally got some needed sleep. Luckily so did I.

The spirit of Fandom and SF must have been watching over us, because when he woke up he was his old self and willing to try to make the trip after all. (I on the other hand was about ready to pass out from stress and worry).

(3) MCMOVIE. Ethan Alter, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story, “‘Mac and Me’ at 30: ‘Ronald McDonald’ remembers his infamous 1988 movie” notes that this is the 30th anniversary of Mac and Me, a cheesy ripoff of E.T. in which Ronald MacDonald teams up with alien “MAC” (or “Mysterious Alien Creature”.) Squire Fridell, who played Ronald MacDonald at the time, tells stories about the production and wishes that the Razzies had mailed him his award for Worst New Actor. Paul Rudd has a long-running gag on Conan where he promises an “exclusive new clip” from whatever movie he is promoting and then shows something from Mac and Me.

The trailer turned out to be a bit of a bait-and-switch, and not just because it made the movie look halfway entertaining. While Ronald presents himself as an equal co-star with the titular bug-eyed alien, his actual role in the Stewart Raffill-directed movie is little more than a glorified cameo.

The government in southern Sweden have granted permission for cows to visit nudist beaches during the prolonged summer heatwave, despite complaints from locals, it’s reported.

According to The Local news website, nudists have been complaining to officials in provincial Smaland about livestock visiting their beaches, saying that their presence is “unhygienic and could pose a health risk”.

It says the roasting summer heat affecting much of continental Europe has led to drought throughout the country, and has meant that farmers have been struggling to feed their animals.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

August 12, 1939 — The Wizard of Oz receives its world premiere in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on this day.

August 12, 1943 – Universal’s Phantom of the Opera debuts. At one point in pre-production it was planned for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello to star.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Born August 12, 1881. Cecil B. DeMille. Yes he did some genre work as Producer: When Worlds Collide, The Ghost Breaker (a silent horror film now lost) and the 1953 War Of The Worlds which he’s not credited for as Executive Producer.

Born August 12 — William Goldman, 87. Writer and / or screenwriter of The Princess Bride, The Stepford Wives, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Dreamcatcher (horror film) and a short video based on The Princess Bride with apparently none of the original cast.

Born August 12 — Sam J. Jones, 64. Flash Gordon in the 1980 film of that name, Krebb in the later Flash Gordon series.

Born August 12 — Bruce Greenwood, 62. Lead in the Nowhere Man series, the Sleepwalkers series, I, Robot, voice work in animated Class of the Titans series, Christopher Pike in Star Trek and voices Batman in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight and Young Justice. Not the same Batman mind you

Born August 12 — Claudia Christian, 53. Babylon 5 of course, and genre roles also in the possibly forthcoming Space Diner Tales in which the year is 2075 and an alien race is set on conquering Earth, the Upworld detective series complete with a talking gnome, Space Rangers, Relic Hunter and Starhyke, a truly awful sounding series.

I have cut way down on the number of cons I attend, due to the press of work, but there’s no way I’d miss a worldcon, by any name. I’ve only missed one in the last thirty years. Dragoncon and San Diego Comicon and GenCon and many other cons are now much bigger, but worldcon remains the original, and the best, the heart of the fannish community. Worldcon is like a family reunion. And yes, like any large family, we have our share of drunken uncles, loony cousins, and snot-nosed kids… but still, family is family. I’ll be there for the whole con. I hope to see many of you in SanJose. Worldcon is great time for getting together with old friends and making new ones.

#sorrynotsorry, I’m going to give you a spoiler right out of the gate:

Nexhuman will offer you enough ideas and discussion topics and thought experiments to keep you busy for the next ten years. In fact, an entire Convention programming track could be built just around the questions and ideas in this book.

What Nexhuman does not offer is concrete answers to any of the questions that are brought up.

But the issue opens with Poul Anderson’s Homo Aquaticus, illustrated on the cover by a swimmer with a menacing look and a more menacing trident, next to a nicely-rendered fish, in one of artist Lloyd Birmingham’s better moments. This is one of Anderson’s atmospheric stories, its mood dominated by Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. No, not those—I mean fate, guilt, doom, that sort of thing. The story’s tone is set in the first paragraph, in which the protagonist “thought he heard the distant blowing of a horn. It would begin low, with a pulse that quickened as the notes waxed, until the snarl broke in a brazen scream and sank sobbing away.”

This is rationalized as the wind in the cliffs, but we know better. The good (space)ship Golden Flyer and its crew have been sentenced to roam the galactic hinterlands after some of their number betrayed other ships of the Kith, a starfaring culture separated from planetary cultures by relativistic time dilation. Right now they’re looking at what used to be a colony planet, but all they see is ruins, until their encounter with the colony’s descendants, as given away by the title. In the end, doom and fate are tempered with rationality and mercy. Three stars, but towards the top of Anderson’s middling range.

Look, you should just read this. Rivers is nominated for the Campbell (Not a Hugo) this year on the strength of this book. It would have been an entirely worthy Best Novel finalist, quite frankly. I was late to it partly because I have lots of things to read and very little time to do it in, and also because I was aware that it would be a difficult read–as in, full of violence and death and heartbreak. That’s all true. This is a fabulous book.

A few times while reading this book, I tried to explain the basic premise to friends. The best I could do is something like this: weird monks on an alien planet or maybe another dimension talk about philosophy, science, and math. This does not in any way do it justice, of course, but it’s really hard to explain this novel.

Of course, for hard core Stephenson fans, the name on the cover is enough. And for philosophers such as myself, those weird alien philosophical monks are irresistible (which is why this novel made a lot of the lists of philosophers’ picks for best philosophical SF compiled by Eric Schwitzgebel). I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some other lovers of this book who sometimes dream about a life as a monastic entirely dedicated to intellectual pursuits, or who maybe just liked Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Others who might love this: people who love immersive world building and massive tomes that come with with a glossary (no maps here, but there are a few calcas – explanatory appendices for those who need even more nerdish detail). As I am at least an occasional member of all of the above groups, my love for this book is present in all nearby possible worlds.

As noted by SyFy, the Orange is the New Black star’s absence from Twitter was spotted by fans on August 11. Ruby also appeared to allude to a potential leave of the platform on Friday, August 10, tweeting: “Where on earth did ‘Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can’t be Batwoman’ come from — has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. I came out at 12? And have for the past 5 years had to deal with ‘she’s too gay’ how do y’all flip it like that? I didn’t change.” Her account appears to have been removed soon after the tweet was made.

Ruby’s Instagram remains active, but SyFy reports that she seems to have limited what comments appear. Her last Instagram post was shared on August 10.

While it’s unknown exactly why Diop essentially cleaned house on her Instagram, some have speculated that it is due to the negative backlash from the first Titans trailer. The trailer, which debuted on Thursday, features several brief glimpses of Starfire using her powers, which have appeared to only continue the racist and sexist remarks surrounding Diop’s casting.

Earlier this year, a series of leaked set photos provided the first look at Diop and her co-stars in costume, which earned backlash for not being “comic accurate”. At the time, Diop actually used Instagram to fire back at the negativity, posting a passionate response to her followers.

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In The New York Public Library’s Collections of Weird Objects on Vimeo, The New Yorker shows viewers some weird things that have ended up in the library’s collections, including a paw from one of Charles Dickens’s cats!

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Karl-Johan Norén, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]

83 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/12/18 Let My Pixels Go”

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Rail says I’ll be honest, though, that not having kept up with the DCUniverse stuff, my first thought on “not comic accurate” was that she’s probably wearing too much costume.

Yeah I’m guessing that plays into their venting a lot. Both the comic and animated versions of her, setting aside the Teen Titans show aimed at a younger audience, feature more visible breast showing that should be possible without a serious wardrobe malfunction. Especially when flying.

I’m actually looking forward to Titans in large part because it’s stridently an adult series. Robin in the trailer is no more violent than the modern telling of Batman is. And the ‘Fuck Batman’ neatly sums up his feelings in DC continuity.

Also @Soon Lee and other Pokemon Go Filers, while we cannot trade our Pokemon without being in physical proximity, I’ve found there’s still quite a benefit to being Friends With Filers — there’s a Pilot badge for trading Pokemon over long distances, and the eggs you get in gift packages from friends show up as being “caught” wherever the friend is. So I just traded a Pokemon hatched from one of the New Zealand eggs you sent me to a local friend with whom I can actually meet up with and trade critters… and I was credited with over 13,000 kilometers for that single trade!

@Mike, were you planning to put up a dedicated thread for How Filers Ranked the Hugo Finalists before the big reveal? I’d be curious to know how well (or poorly) our collective tastes align with the Hugo voters as a whole…

Quickly writing up and emailing the text of the post so OGH doesn’t have to would probably be the most expedient way to get one, assuming Mike doesn’t have a reason not to want to host it this year. I’m sure it would only need a few sentences at most.

Techgrrl72: I see in the “Protests at Worldcon76” thread at least 4 of us are not getting our info autofilled. Did one of your updates flip a switch? Like a switch that says “autofill on” or something?
It’s annoying, especially on mobile.
Thanks for your help on this.

I’d help if I could. Autofilling isn’t anything I control from my side. (While trying to investigate the question I discovered there is at least one plugin available to STOP autofilling, however, I don’t have it installed.)

From Amazon: Along with the six Earthsea novels, The Books of Earthsea will collect a number of Earthsea stories, including “The Word of Unbinding” and “The Rule of Names,” as well as the new, never-before-published-in-print “The Daughter of Odren.”

As far as we can tell, some Worldcon 76 members who bought Site Selection voting tokens did not receive the tokens; however, we have no way of knowing which members did and did not receive them. Therefore, to cover all bases, we sent out an e-mail to every person who bought a voting token telling them what their token is. This has nothing to do with whether you voted or not.

Once you have bought your token, whether you vote or not is your own business. Buying a voting token and not voting is an informal way of voting “no preference.” In my experience, it’s rare for the number of ballots to be exactly the same as the number of Advance Supporting Memberships purchased. There are usually a couple of people who pay their fee and then forget to drop their ballot in the box or drop their receipt in the box and take their ballot home with them or something like that.

The pull-quote had me reaching for the ORDER button; I love high-concept question-asking discussion-provoking SF. (And personality upload is one of my all-time favorite tropes! Thanks, Dollhouse, you messed-up almost-was you…)

But then the actual review makes it sound like the focus is primarily on a stalkery obsession relationship. I’m honestly not sure where the actual ideas and topics come in:

The plot of the book revolves around Peter spending making it his life’s goal to find all of the pieces of Alba’s body, and put her back together. So they can live happily ever after. (…) He does unspeakable things to get information about where her parts are.

Like, okay, squeamishness aside (I don’t have much; OTOH I don’t enjoy books whose primary goal seems to be eliciting some). The review says “enough ideas and discussion topics and thought experiments to keep you busy for the next ten years”, but… then I’m not sure it actually gives an example of a single idea?

The review concludes:

Like I said right at the start, this novel asks a ton of questions, but doesn’t offer much answers. Because Peter doesn’t care about answers. He only cares about putting Alba back together.

I dunno. If the book and their protagonist don’t even care about the questions, I guess I don’t feel like it’s really asking them?

(This is much more me responding to the review than to the book itself; it just… feels so mis-matched, and it was something of a letdown.)